Reputation is a Fragile Thing: The Story of Cheap Trick

Reputation is a Fragile Thing: The Story of Cheap Trick by Mike Hayes with Ken Sharp

Reputation is a Fragile Thing is book by a serious fan of the band Cheap Trick that is really only for other serious fans of Cheap Trick.  Sadly, this simply is not a very well written book.  I don’t know much about the author, but apparently this is not the first book he’s written about a music group.  I’m a bit surprised as this thing seemed to be majorly unfocused.  Personally, I consider myself a serious fan of Cheap Trick, and whereas I did learn a few things, I basically cringed my way throughout my reading since there seemed to be no attempt by the author to write a serious work. This is definitely not a ‘bio’ and it really isn’t a ‘story’ either. It’s basically a regurgitation of everything this band has done since its inception up until around 1998 (when the book was written).

One gets the feeling that the author never even interviewed the band. I’m not saying he didn’t, I just didn’t feel as though he did based on what I read.  It seemed like what the author might have done was go through all of the rock magazines he collected as a kid, and then crafted the story here from what has already been written about the band.  There’s very little in this book about the personalities in the band and what really drives them. Instead, this book seems to rush through their musical career. Not necessarily a bad thing, but again, there’s no real imagination or creativity behind the written words.  The entire book reads like:

“The band then found themselves exhausted after another long tour.”
“….then Rick went and helped the band xxx record the songs, “abc”, “def,” and “ghi” for their new album.”
“….meanwhile, Robin appeared on stage with the band yyy and helped play the songs “bcd”, “efg”, and a rousing version of “hij”.
“….then, the band went back into the studio and recorded demos of songs they never used with the titles…..”

The entire book is like this, and it rarely lets the reader up for air to breathe.  To be fair, Cheap Trick did move at a very fast pace; especially during the early years (they released six albums from 1977 to 1980), but it’s maddeningly upsetting that there’s so little introspection here.  If the reader wants to find out why Tom was fired in 1980, there’s not a lot here that won’t tell the reader what they already know.  If they want to find out why Pete (Tom’s replacement) was fired, there’s even less.  A Google search can yield better results.  To be fair, this book was written in 1998 before the internet became as well known, so maybe such criticisms I’m making are a tad unfair.  We must also remember that the acrimonious split with drummer Bun E. Carlos didn’t occur until around 2010, so there’s nothing here that would indicate any kind of squabbling amongst the members.

The entire book feels ‘homemade’. It feels like the author wrote it, published it, and sold it all from his basement.  There’s a couple of page groupings that contain pictures, but even this feels very haphazard.  Many of the pictures are rare, so they’re fun to view, but they’re all in black and white and thrown in the book without any thought or care.

Most of the book’s chapters are broken down by album with titles like “Next Producer Please” and “Back and Busted”, so you can tell by just reading the chapter titles that the author’s imagination is somewhat limited.  The author also feels the need to list EVERY song on EVERY album with comments about each song in this book that doesn’t really serve much purpose.  On rare occasions we do read about some interesting tidbits about a particular song, but most of the commentary contains such tripe as 

“…’Baby No More’ speeds along at 100 MPH, a frenetic grunge styled number with Bun E’s Ludwig kit bearing the brunt of abuse…”  

This gets old quick.  We really don’t need this sort of commentary about every song the band ever wrote and recorded. The author even feels necessary to do this for their live albums, the live Chicagofest 81 show, Zander’s lone solo album, and Tom’s one album that he recorded with his ex-wife.  Now, I fail to see the point in the author doing this.  Casual fans couldn’t care less, and serious fans would only be impressed if the song featured some deep, unknown factoid that serious fans enjoy.  At times I felt like I was reading a fan post his review of an album on an Internet Board.

There’s also a lot of silly references to what the band did (or didn’t do) in England.  Why all the focus on England?  JAPAN was where they exploded. Right?   I then realized the author is from England.  Oy.

Perhaps my biggest frustration with all of this is the price of the book itself.  The paperback version costs $34.95 and it’s barely 200 pages of reading material.  Maybe if the book cost half that much I would have not been so seriously disappointed.

Again, the serious fan probably needs this in their collection.  These are the fans that buy every picture disc they can get their hands on, as well devote a huge chunk of their disposable income to travel all over the country to see multiple shows by the band every year.  Yes, this type of fan needs this book so they can post it in their homemade Cheap Trick museum in their basement.   Everyone else can, and should, skip this one.